Microsoft ports DTrace to Windows

Here at Microsoft, we are always looking to engage with open source communities to produce better solutions for the community and our customers . One of the more useful debugging advances that have arrived in the last decade is DTrace. DTrace of course needs no introduction: it’s a dynamic tracing framework that allows an admin or developer to get a real-time look into a system either in user or kernel mode. DTrace has a C-style high level and powerful programming language that allows you to dynamically insert trace points. Using these dynamically inserted trace points, you can filter on conditions or errors, write code to analyze lock patterns, detect deadlocks, etc. ETW while powerful, is static and does not provide the ability to programmatically insert trace points at runtime.

We have created a Windows branch for “DTrace on Windows” under the OpenDTrace project on GitHub. All our changes made to support DTrace on Windows are available here. Over the next few months, we plan to work with the OpenDTrace community to merge our changes. All our source code is also available at the 3rd party sources website maintained by Microsoft.

Microsoft is continuing its effort to draw developers to Windows by implementing features developers actually seem to want, instead of trying to push in-house features that are unique to Windows that nobody is asking for.

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Indeed. I attribute it to the fact that microsoft can’t ignore that most data center work is happening on non-windows open platforms and they need to catch up.

Looking back, it’s hard to say whether open source was a good business strategy for sun microsystem’s projects, but I’m thankful that they did because their technology continues to exist today because it was open sourced and it’s utility can continue to grow. If it had been closed source, most of their technology would have been lost as oracle took over.

Well, as most other closed source UNIX vendors died a death a long time ago, it’s done them no harm.

The only other UNIX wars veterans still around are IBM and HP. IBM have largely embraced open source as well, though not for AIX, and HP-UX is slowly dying a death, with both it’s software base and target processor being killed off. According to the HP-UX roadmap, future HP-UX workloads will be targeted at Linux (presumably some sort of emulated HP-UX environment on Linux?) [source: https://h20195.www2.hpe.com/v2/getpdf.aspx/4AA3-9071ENW.pdf ]

christian, Well, as most other closed source UNIX vendors died a death a long time ago, it’s done them no harm.

Open source has a lot of different benefits, but it’s kind of a double edges sword for for-profit companies that have to live or die by profits. It’s quite difficult to be profitable when most FOSS users won’t pay a dime to upstream developers. In the end UNIX vendors couldn’t compete with Linux, which was such an effective & practical clone running on dirt cheap commodity servers. It just made a lot of scense for it to take over in the data center. But I still have sympathy for a lot of the talented developers (ie at Sun) who did good work but still lost their jobs because they couldn’t compete against free clones. I admit that it’s hard for me to reconcile these feelings internally.

But I still have sympathy for a lot of the talented developers (ie at Sun) who did good work but still lost their jobs because they couldn’t compete against free clones. I admit that it’s hard for me to reconcile these feelings internally.

If Redhat could make money off the “free clone”, Sun could have made money off its own technology. The problem with UNIX vendors is an obsession with locking customers in to proprietary things.

If Redhat could make money off the “free clone”, Sun could have made money off its own technology. The problem with UNIX vendors is an obsession with locking customers in to proprietary things.

I haven’t found the data, but I think redhat makes most of it’s money through consulting and services rather than selling red hat licenses. Sun made money on sun workstations and servers back in the day, but I don’t think they made enough with support & consulting to offset the steady drop in hardware sales. Ultimately, the differences between redhat and sun may be immaterial since redhat is being acquired in much the same way Sun was.

It may be an indicator that open source business models are more fragile than we want to admit. Maybe I’m just too dramatic about it, but I find it troubling that so open source companies ultimately get taken over by more profitable companies as the technology industry continues to consolidate.

Which is my point. Sun could have made Solaris easier to get and do more with consulting and services, but they left it too late.

Maybe, but redhat’s consulting business was benefiting from the growth of commodity linux meanwhile sun’s consulting business was hurting from it. They gave open solaris a go and it failed. Are you suggesting sun should have given it away sooner? It’s unclear to me that it would have increased revenue. The thing is Sun was very much an R&D company. In addition to DTrace mentioned here, Sun was always adding new innovative features like zfs, virtualization, cotaniners, etc that would eventually work their way into linux. We’ve all benefited from their pioneering work.

Maybe it’s possible that if Sun had focused less on adding features to solaris and more on becoming a linux contracting company like redhat instead, things could have turned out better for them. But even if this were true, it’s not an immensely satisfactory outcome either. How are we supposed to apply that lesson today? “That’s a nice mobile platform you’ve developed there, now throw it away and rebase your business around android and IOS because those are going to be the winners anyways”. As the years pass I have a lot of difficulty coming to terms with all the consolidation happening to our industry, I really wish more players could thrive. I worry about where our world is headed with such concentrated power, though spewing my world philosophy here is probably a bit much for an article about “dtrace”, haha.

They gave open solaris a go and it failed. Are you suggesting sun should have given it away sooner?

Yes, but then, hindsight is 20/20. But they would have needed to be really serious about developing the services side of it and not just hope for market penetration.

But even if this were true, it’s not an immensely satisfactory outcome either. How are we supposed to apply that lesson today?

Redhat being acquired by IBM is a big opportunity, I would think. I’d be poaching Redhat engineers and management as they become disgruntled with and/or RA’d by IBM management. Fork Redhat, the company 🙂 It’s not as if their business model didn’t work. It obviously did.

Redhat being acquired by IBM is a big opportunity, I would think. I’d be poaching Redhat engineers and management as they become disgruntled with and/or RA’d by IBM management. Fork Redhat, the company It’s not as if their business model didn’t work. It obviously did.

Well, large corporations usually get the pick of profitable work, and the rest of us are small fish scrounging over the leftovers that big corporations didn’t touch because it didn’t pay enough. As a small business owner, I’d have great difficulty paying the salary of former redhat employees without redhat’s profitable client contracts that IBM just bought up. Realistically most of those employees are going to end up working for other huge corporations that can afford them rather than smaller less profitable open source shops.

Debian is a well recognized brand in open source, but they rely more on volunteers. As you know they’ve got an opening at the very top…

It seems like a good opportunity for someone passionate about open source, but how many red hat employees would forgo their salaries to take that kind of job? I might see myself in that kind of role, but I’ve also got bills to pay. :-/

Maybe it’s possible that if Sun had focused less on adding features to solaris and more on becoming a linux contracting company like redhat instead, things could have turned out better for them. But even if this were true, it’s not an immensely satisfactory outcome either

Additionally, focusing on “consulting and services” creates an incentive to make software which kinda requires them… (by being hard to use for example)